In reality the Beatles songs werent all that good

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I respect Beatles fans- and I agree that the beatles changed music in a lot of ways and they did some interesting stuff, but if you really study their songs the lyrics were really not very good.

Like "She loves you- yeah,yeah, yeah. Catchy kind of, but really not very good songwriting there.

Then other songs "Well she looked at me, and I could see that before too long I fall in love with her". Ouch. I know that was early Beatles stuff. They got even worse later on. "Hey Jude take a sad song and make it better"...
One of their best songs "Yesterday" is so full of cliches. It sounds as if they were writing a jingle for anti wrinkle cream.

Those are just a few examples, granted, but I listen to their music. Its okay on the surface, but no where near genius level .They would never make it in Nashville as songwriters where songs count. I think they were more about image and style than anything else.
If you really study their lyrics and songs they were mediocre at best. They were at the right place/right time.

I agree totally. I heard it said, correctly, they they were nothing more than the first boy band...

When the rest of the civilized world, including the majority of experts and historians, uniformly agrees on the value of something and you can't see it, that usually says more about you than it does about the historical or artistic merit of the subject at hand. It says you don't have the sophistication to accurately comprehend what you're looking at - much like people who look at a Picasso and complain that it looks like a child's drawing - these people are ignorant of the intellectual purpose of the Cubist approach to painting.

Pop lyrics in general aren't required to make a lot of sense, they're supposed to be singable. It's the melody and the 'hook' that count, because that's what gets in your head and makes you want to hear (and sing) it over and over and over. Paul McCartney is an absolute f**king genius at coining hummable pop music hooks. I can't think of a single composer in the past century any more consistent and prolific at it - not Paul Simon, not Tom Petty - nobody does it better than McCartney. He's not my personal favorite songwriter or even my favorite Beatle, but I respect his innate talent (BTW commercial jingles sound the way they do, because they ape Pop Music).

Here's the deal - you go back and listen to ALL the Pop Music that was making the Billboard charts throughout the 1950s and into the 60s, in the order it was being released, month by month (I have) and listen to the gradual changes. No, "Yeah, Yeah, Yeah" may not have been Shakespeare, it wasn't significantly any better or worse that anything else being done at the time, the novelty was more in the Beatles' unique harmonies than anything else. But then something happened. The Beatles met Bob Dylan, who turned them on to Mary Jane, which altered their perceptions of the very music they were making and, in turn, caused them to change their approach to making it. The opening bass note of 'I Feel Fine' was the shot heard 'round the world. Nobody had ever heard anything like it before and from that day forward, Pop Music blasted outward exponentially in every direction. A medium which had been giving the world Pat Boone, Patti Page and The Mills Brothers - a medium that found Elvis and the Beach Boys to be radicals - suddenly gave us Black Sabbath, Yes, Jimi Hendrix, Emerson Lake & Palmer, Jethro Tull, The Who and Led Zeppelin - in the space of 6 years, we went from Do Wah Diddy Diddy to Stairway to Heaven and The Beatles led the way. They changed everything, just by being themselves and that is artistic genius. Pop Music (other than Hip Hop, which is an intellectual degeneration), hasn't significantly changed since that period.

Nashville? Seriously? I mean, I'm a lyrics freak and love lyrical poets, like Morrison, Dylan, Ian Anderson, Joni Mitchell, Mark Knopfler, Kate Bush and Tori Amos, but seriously, if The Beatles had done 'Achy Breaky Heart,' or 'The American Honky Tonk Bar Association,' I'd have killed myself.

She Loves You, I Saw Here Standing There and even Hey Jude were not written to be lyrical masterpieces, they were written to be anthems that everyone can sing along to. Two of them are extremely high energy numbers that were essentially unprecedented, and the third is probably the greatest live song ever.

Yesterday wasn't full of clichés at the time. It has become that way because people have imitated it. "But soft, what light through yonder window breaks"? Pfft, heard it all before.

You want Beatley lyricism, you need to look at songs like Blackbird, Strawberry Fields Forever, Eleanor Rigby, Julia, The End, Nowhere Man, In My Life, While My Guitar Gently Weeps, and Across The Universe.

Re: OP--Hey Jude was written for Julian Lennon, in reference to John's bad parenting

A few years ago, George Martin remixed a bunch of Beatles stuff for Cirque du Soleil:

Gets good at 2:25
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOkzg8TQKUI[/youtube]

Last edited by Stannis on 31 Mar 2014, 10:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

I still think nobody has surpassed the Beatles, and doubt they'll ever be surpassed.

The Beatles were revolutionary, because they were originally a 'pop' band who took their image of covering songs, and started writing whole albums of their own, introducing the west to Sitars, as well as introducing to 'mainstream' audiences to ground-breaking ways of recording albums.

If I disregard this information (for not being born or growing up in the 1960s), I still love The Beatles' music. Pretty much beats pop music of today, and it's more poetic than genius I find.

I totally diagree with Willard, who sounds incredibly snobby and stuck up. The idea that a majority consesus MUST be true is absurd. Justin Bieber has millions of fans. Does that make him a musical genuis? No.

The reality is-=the Beatles SUCKED.

Their songs were badly written, lyrically inept, and horribly produced. As was mentioned on this thread, they pretty much popularised the idea of boybands. So their claim to fame is paving the way for Take That and Boyzone. Yeah, beatles deserve soooo much praise *rolls eyes*

If you watch old beatles concerts, nobody even bloody LISTENED to them playing. It was just thousands of women in the crowd screaming their heads off. The beatles were just a load of wank material for girls of the time who had no taste in men.

Here are some bands/artists who I feel deserve the amount of respect the beatles get: Trent Reznor (Nine Inch Nails), Gary Numan, Mike Patton, Wes Borland.

All of the above push the envelope with their music, and write for THEMSELVES, Not to become popular. They are insanely experimental, but are still able to be very "catchy" which seems to be the argument as to why the beatles are so great :p

Can I ask if anyone who doesn't like the Beatles has actually listened to their best albums all of the way through? I mean, I don't think even their most loyal fans attempt to suggest that material from "With the Beatles" is why they are regarded as one of the greatest rock bands of all time.

Listen to Revolver, Magical Mystery Tour and The White Album before you make hasty judgements.

The majority consensus is that Justin Bieber is not especially talented...

I give this troll attempt 2/10.
You score points for the Bieber comparison. You lose points for being predictable (particularly when you ripped off the OP's comments without responding to the debunking), and for suggesting Faith No More were better than The Beatles, which is an opinion no serious person could ever hold.

I do like them, but their music was pretty simple nothing spectacular really.....but certainly sounds good. But then its not like they ever claimed to be the worlds greatest musicians or anything. Hell I like motley crue and they weren't the greatest bands but they do have some songs I like. But its not always amazing musical skill that makes the band, Pink Floyd were not great musicians and they still created some pretty creative great music but it wasn't based on proper music theory or whatever it was more based around experimental sounds and such.

The White Album has been, and will continue to be regarded as a classic.
Sit down and listen to it all the way through, then go back and look at what the sheet music looks like for each song.
Then read up on how each song was recorded, and how they created the sound effects WITHOUT digital equipment.
Blimey, they were great artists.
Excuse me now, I have to listen to "Savoy Truffle."

Somebody disagrees with your buttlove for an ovverated band, so you label them a troll? Yeah, nice one :p Its pretty obvious from your name and profile pic that you are biased, so your argument is already invalid.

And the reason I used the OP's comments, is because they were strong points that I also agree with, so I was posting to show that he wasn't the only one with the same opinion. Everyone else on this thread must be tone deaf or something.

I speak AS a musician, so I know what I'm talking about. Hell, I'd pit my best songs against their best any day. I may not be famous like they were, but since when has fame been synonymous with skill? Exactly. And at least I don't have their totally ret*d hair cuts :p

Btw, the reason I said Mike Patton, and not FNM, is because he has TONS of bands and solo projects. You would know that if you actually listened to something other than the beatles all day. They really weren't that great. Deal with it.

I'm no fan of them - don't own a single song of theirs, can't remember the last time I voluntarily heard one - but I think you're talking s**t.

All successful bands are right place/right time. But looking at what other successful bands were doing around the time, I think The Beatles were head and shoulders above most of them, with little direct competition. I think they're interesting because of where they started - amphetamine-fuelled covers - and where they went and kept pushing to. That they took the popularity they had with them. That they were able to cover such ground as songwriters and musicians and a group. A song is more than words plus music. The words have to fit the music - the music (and voice) lifts the words, adds meaning to them beyond what's there when they're lying on the page.

That girls (and boys) would scream at them as they played live is hardly their fault. It can't be much fun if you're into your songs, and all the audience does is shriek so loud you can barely hear yourself play.

What songs do you have in mind, when comparing?

I prefer The Kinks over The Beatles, because they were the original punks and they sound good to my ears. Having said that, I think The Beatles recorded some good numbers.

And, sincerely, that is one of the greatest song lyrics written. I hear that, and I start smiling. I don't know what he means, and yet I know exactly what he means.